A Husband Must Man Up

This is the seventh part of Chapter 2 in the unfinished Book: The Ruling Household.
Here are links to The Intro and the sixth part of Chapter 2.

Why Men Struggle with Responsibility

God creates the man and then loads responsibilities on his shoulders.

He’s responsible for guarding and cultivating the garden (Genesis 2:15).
He’s responsible for naming and ruling the animals (Genesis 2:19).
He’s responsible for obeying and retelling the words of God to his wife (Genesis 16-17).

And he’s given a suitable helper, a companion to help him stay squarely underneath his burden.

Then comes the test.

What will the man do when given an opportunity to neglect his responsibility, or ignore his responsibility, or shift his responsibility?

At each test, we see Adam tempted to take the easy way out.

And even though the story makes clear his wife sinned first, the bulk of the responsibility for humanity’s fall belongs to Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22).

On that fateful day when the serpent tempts Eve to break the one command God gave to humanity, we see she misquotes the Word of God (Genesis 3:3), that Adam was with her when she eats (Genesis 3:6), that Adam eats while not being deceived (1 Timothy 2:14), and that his sin triggers the cascade of consequences we’ve been experiencing ever since (Genesis 3:7).

And notice that God’s response was not to first confront the woman or the couple but the man. 

God calls to the man (Genesis 3:9).
God questions the man (Genesis 3:10-11).

And after giving him ample opportunity to confess Adam admits his failure and pleads for mercy on behalf of his family.

Oh wait that’s not what Adam does. He first blames his wife and then God himself (Genesis 3:12).

Ugh! Not only are we dealing with Adam’s sin, or his refusal to confess but he’s determined to make the whole thing someone else’s fault.

So why does God confront the man for a sin the whole family committed? 

Because it’s clear both here and throughout the whole of Scripture that while wives bear some responsibility for their personal actions the overall responsibility for the family rests on the shoulders of the husband.

And we men have been trying to get out from under this responsibility ever since.

Tool: Man Up Under the Full Weight of Your Responsibility

In A Few Good Men (one of the best-written screenplays of all time), Aaron Sorkin introduces us to a series of male characters each of whom has a different strategy for how to handle the weight of responsibility.

The protagonist and lead lawyer Daniel Kaffee is a world-class expert at getting responsibility off his shoulders through aggressive plea bargaining. Colonel Jessup played by Jack Nicholson thinks he’s responsible for the safety of the whole world and so has no higher authority to answer to. But the best example of a son of Adam is found in Kaffee’s assistant counsel Sam Weinberg, who clarifies in his opening scene that he will only help if “I have no responsibility whatsoever.”

He then loudly announces his responsibility-free status whenever given the chance.

The only major female character in the film, Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway, first tries to take responsibility away from Kaffee and only after being unsuccessful decides to help him by forcing him to face the full terrifying weight of his responsbility.

So while the overt plot of the film centers on a complex murder trial the deeper plot explores the dynamic of how men wrestle with bearing responsibility and how women struggle to help.

There is a simple tool men have been given to cause them to bear the full weight of their responsibility and many of you, both men and women, are not going to like it.

It starts with believing that every family needs a man, every man has ultimate responsibility for the health of that family and that the man needs his wife to acknowledge her husband has authority over the family.

This puts at the center of every family a nearly unbearable tension that God calls out explicitly after the Fall when he says to the woman,

“Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16 ESV)

Why are husbands given this authority?

Because he is given ultimate responsibility.

You cannot give someone responsibility for something and then fail to give them the authority over that arena of responsibility.

To take authority away is to take away responsibility. 

They must remain in sync.

Imagine telling a coach he’s responsible for whether the team wins or loses but that you’re taking away his authority over the players, the coaching staff, and the game plan. Holding him accountable would be impossible. As soon as you remove his authority the responsibility shifts automatically to whoever has the authority. That’s how responsibility works.

So the tool for helping men overcome the passivity we’ve inherited from our father Adam is to give them responsibility along with its corresponding authority and then hold them accountable for the outcome.

Accepting this responsibility is what is meant by the phrase, “man up”.

I can think of no better way to destroy civilization than to encourage men to do the opposite, to “man down”. But that’s exactly what Western culture appears to be doing.

Why? Because we hate this design for the family.

Most men don’t like this because they can’t shift the blame.
Many women don’t like this because they have to submit to their husband’s authority.
Most Western societies don’t like this because it turns the family into an unequal patriarchal institution.

But that’s the way God designed it and it’s the design that will give you the best outcome for men, women, children, and the whole of society.

And men, it’s important to remember God never intended for you to do this alone.

God’s intention is to provide every family leader with a capable wife, an encouraging father and mother, loyal brothers and sisters, and in time a whole team of sons and daughters.

And although I’ve been talking about responsibility as a burden I’ve grown to understand that it’s the best and perhaps the only pathway to living a meaningful life.

Remember that we’re not talking about responsibility over what modern families have become, a place of recreation and comfort while we do the most meaningful activities of our lives as individuals. No, we’re talking about building a ruling household and the more you rule the more important it is to be crystal clear about who has the ultimate responsibility and authority.

Every father is on a journey away from the sin of Adam, through the skill of Abraham toward a deepening apprenticeship to the way of Jesus.

We have a long way to go but accepting our responsibility is an early, necessary step.